1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and apparatus, which perform customer counting in the retail environment.
2. Related Art
Several technologies exist for counting customers in the retail environment. One objective of such systems is to determine the customer conversion rate in a particular environment. Customer conversion rate is the ratio of the number of customers who enter the environment, i.e., the amount of traffic in a location, to the number of sales or to the dollar value of the sales in the particular environment. Computing customer conversion ratios in a quick and accurate fashion is important to retailers desiring to evaluate and improve their retail environments.
In order to compute customer conversion ratios, information must be obtained from two, usually independent, sources. Customer counts must be obtained from some sort of manual or automatic, direct or indirect observation of traffic. Numbers or values of sales must be obtained, usually from point of sale computers or terminals, or central sales logging computers, or the like.
One method of counting customers is to observe a retail environment with video equipment. The images obtained therefrom can be processed to determine the number of customers who move through an area in a given period of time. Such systems are complex and require expensive installation by skilled technicians for proper operation.
Another method of counting customers is to incorporate a tag device into an article like a shopping cart, which is then detected when the customer moves the cart past a suitable sensor. Again, the system and tagged carts are expensive and require installation by skilled technicians for proper operation.
Yet another method of counting customers involves deploying sensors in locations to be monitored. McGregor et al. disclose such a system in U.S. Pat. No. 5,250,941-B1. Simple sensors, such as pressure sensitive strips, carpeting and the like, ultrasonic, infrared, and other presence or movement detectors can be used. A principle disadvantage of such deployments of sensors is simply the expense and inconvenience of having to install and maintain them throughout the areas to be monitored. Another disadvantage is that such sensors can be fooled into undercounting or overcounting traffic depending on the exact pattern of traffic and sensor characteristics.
It is a general object of the invention to provide an improved customer counting system in a retail environment.
According to one aspect of the invention, there is a customer conversion system, comprising a data processing unit including a real-time clock and an input, a sensor having an output indicative of each activation of the sensor, and an interface unit connecting the output of the sensor to the input of the data processing unit. In one variation, this system may include a security system to which the sensor output is connected. In another variation, the system may include a software program executing on the data processing unit which performs receiving the output of the sensor from the interface unit, and storing a record of the output of the sensor together with a time-stamp based on the real-time clock. In yet another variation, the system may include another sensor having an output indicative of each activation of the other sensor, another interface unit connecting the output of the other sensor to the input of the data processing unit, and a multiplexer through which the interface unit and the other interface unit connect the output of the sensor and the output of the other sensor to the input of the data processing unit.
According to another aspect of the invention, in a retail store including a security system having sensors which detect entry of a person and a point of sale computer including a real-time clock, a customer conversion system may include an interface unit connecting the sensor from the security system to the point of sale computer, and a software program executing on the point of sale computer which receives a signal indicating entry of a person from the sensor through the interface unit, and stores a record of receipt of the signal together with a time-stamp indicating when the signal was received.